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Cuts Leave Christmas Trees Without a Ride to Recyclers

For the past decade, the city's Christmas tree recycling program has brought redemption to the tens of thousands of tinsel-trailing trees left lonely at the curb each year.

As if fueled by the holiday spirit, the city's Sanitation Department ran special pickups to take the pines to one of four designated areas in the city to be chipped and get an afterlife as compost in city parks, community gardens and private yards. Even the Rockefeller Center tree has traditionally been chipped and mulched.

But this year, because of budget cuts, city trash collectors will put discarded trees into garbage trucks along with the trash, to be hauled to out-of-state incinerators and landfills. The city and private groups will still offer mulching at various sites, but they acknowledge that persuading residents to take their prickly, needle-shedding pines beyond the curb will be tough.

The Christmas tree mulching was part of a larger composting program halted by city officials earlier this year, along with the recycling of glass and plastics, to save money.

But Michael E. McMahon, a Democratic councilman from Staten Island who is chairman of the City Council's Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Committee, called the move shortsighted. In 2000, the city collected and composted about 2,000 tons of Christmas trees.

''The composting program paid for itself,'' he said yesterday, ''and now we're paying to ship tens of thousands of trees in a container to landfills. That sends the wrong message. It's bad for the environment and bad for the soul of the city.''

Laura Haight, a senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group, said: ''This will certainly take some of the joy out of Christmas this year. New Yorkers like the idea of Christmas trees being recycled. Plus, landfill space is at a premium and this clutters it up more. It's just so stupid.''

And Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association, the sanitation workers' union, said packing trees in with other trash will fill up garbage trucks quickly and lead to collection delays.

Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor's office, defended the suspension of the program as a crucial step in closing the city's budget gap. ''It would've been great to continue the program, but unfortunately we cannot afford it,'' he said.

Meanwhile, local organizations are keeping the recycling spirit by holding chipping days, and hope residents will go the extra few blocks.

In Brooklyn, organizers are bracing for a huge turnout in Prospect Park on Jan. 4, this season's Chipping Day, rushing to recruit local community groups to help out. They have some chippers on loan from local tree maintenance companies and are even mobilizing trucks to run some limited curbside pickups.

For several years, the Parks and Recreation Department has run Mulchfest, putting tree chippers at various city parks. The department will add park locations this year, including Van Cortlandt in the Bronx and Tompkins Square and Riverside in Manhattan. The Staten Island Botanical Garden is also participating.

Even Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn has organized its own chipping day, Jan. 11, said its president, Richard J. Moylan. ''New York's Christmas trees deserve a better final resting place than some dump down South,'' he said.